I think I agree. I mean, compare the plot and dialog of Batman: Sub Zero (1998) with Batman and Robin (1997). The former was an animated movie ostensibly intended for kids. The latter was... I dunno... At PG-13, I thought it might be intended for teens and young adults, but I think that's an insult to teens and young adults.
The budget on the latter was estimated at $125M. Budget on the former isn't even listed, was probably in single digit millions. (This isn't a fair comparison, but I had to bring it up. Think of all the starving children $125M could have fed...)
Yet, Sub Zero is by far the superior story. In fact, saying it was better than Batman and Robin is not saying enough. If you wanted to make a Mister Freeze live action film, and you just used the Sub Zero script as written, you'd still make a superior movie, even with the same lackluster cast.
To bring this discussion full circle, this is why advanced information about "blockbusters" is absolutely vital these days. Because "blockbusters" so often degenerate into "death by committee", and by the time they reach the screen, they're a noisy, frantic, busy, mighty sucking sound. My daughter (16 year old art student) is so fed up with fractional-gigabuck crapfests that her desire to see a film has become inversely proportional to its budget, and she heavily favors small independent studios that are still willing to take chances. I can't fault that. I still want to see Green Lantern, though. Even though it could be this year's transforrretch. I still can't say it.
> Actually, I always try to miss all the clips and previews for any movie I'm vaguely interested in watching. They're so much more enjoyable going in with minimal expectations.
Fair enough. I can appreciate that, and years ago I tried to do the same thing. The problem is, I got suckered into a big budget crapfest wayyyy too many times, and at today's prices, I just can't justify that anymore. A certain amount of Caveat Emptor is necessary these days in my opinion, which necessitates that surprises are fewer on opening days. Feel free to disagree.
For instance, I very nearly ended up paying money to see Sucker Punch...
As an X-men fan, as I assume you are, I can't believe you missed that in the plethora of advance materials on the film.
But to be utterly pedantic, I didn't see anything in the film that would forbid it from being a reboot. Personally, I'd like to pretend the other movies didn't happen. I suspect that won't be the case, but hope springs eternal.
The first X-men movie seemed to be stiff and self-conscious. This is often the case in the first film of a franchise. What was unusual was that the second and third films were *more* stiff and self-conscious. Although there were enjoyable bits, overall the first film sorta worked as a "first film", the second mostly didn't work, and the third didn't work at all. I personally think this was due to an inexcusable overuse of Wolverine in what was supposed to be an ensemble cast. Feel free to disagree.
Parenthetically, why do "blockbuster" movie scripts suck so often? If "the last stand" had a tenth of the creativity and pathos of "god loves man kills" it would have been worth watching. As it is we got a bunch of set-piece battles and some big digital effects, but the rest was cliche even for a comic book.
Anyway, First Class had its problems (excellent dialog over here, really laughably bad dialog over there, like the writers were bipolar) (the change of Raven's appearance from appliances and body makeup to some kind of zip-up wetsuit) (Charles' inexplicably inept handling of his relationship with his adopted sister) but in general the story worked. It's the first x-men movie I've wanted to see twice.
Yeah, Alex was really Scott's younger brother, Sean was a contemporary of Charles, yadda yadda. We've had so many different versions of the story in the comics (I prefer "Ultimate x-men") that I can't see how we could complain that the backstory has changed again. The movies really only need to be self-consistent. And worth watching. The last one wasn't. This one was.
Seems to me the solution would be to post "I wanted to use this [dentist,doctor,occultist] but they required that I sign the following agreement: [...]
I can see it now... June 3 comes and goes... No word for three days, then on Monday Randy Pitchford of Gearbox makes a short public statement that they've had "a really bad weekend" and will have to regroup... By Wednesday they'll say they miscalculated the release date and it'll be sometime in November. Wired gets one last chance to vote DNF "vaporware of the year"...
Then it's all rendered moot on October 21 when the world ends. DNF fanatics on rooftops are still trying to torrent the leaked beta while the lava moves in.
I disagree. Example: I've been a geek since before AlGore invented the internet, but I have learned to defer to my daughter for obscure Android questions. Not because I'm afraid to push buttons -- quite the contrary -- but because I no longer have the patience to struggle with badly thought-out interfaces. She'll do a recursive journey down each menu path looking for obscure settings, usually while watching TV, where I'll either blow it off or look it up on Android Central, or ask her. This has absolutely nothing to do with being "scared" of the interface. It has to do with not wanting to invest in the time to figure out where the designer haphazardly pasted a feature, or (in this case) the function of various unmarked buttons.
Remember, correlation is not causation. That some people have anxiety about obscure interfaces, and that they tend to be "old" (whatever that means in this context), doesn't necessarily lead to the conclusion that a well-designed interface would incite fear in the elderly merely because they aren't familiar with it. The actual cause, in my opinion, is more likely to be that the examples -- cute trendy buttons that don't advertise their true purpose -- are indicative of bad design.
Hell, my mother -- in her seventies -- called me not long ago, said she had a computer problem she couldn't figure out. When the usual stuff didn't solve it, she booted from the cd and was rooting around in the recovery console. That takes more guts than possessed by most non-geeks of any age.
It's not an older/younger thing, it's entirely an "unnecessarily complicated or obscure" thing. Sure, younger people have more experience with enigmatic interfaces, and are more likely to keep trying without getting frustrated, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the interface in question appeals to young folk. For instance, a "set alarm" button would be more immediately understood regardless of age, or (and this point is completely missed) degree of geekiness.
Yeah, I was being unfair. I used it for about 3 months when AOL was a new thing, but finally dropped it (which took an additional two months and required that I cancel the credit card they were charging -- but I digress) because the people using it weren't... my kind of people. The geeks were still using IRC and Usenet. Now the IRC users appear to be using Google Talk. And the Usenet users... who migrated there from discrete bulletin boards, migrated from Usenet to various internet forums, which in my opinion was a step backwards. I went from several accounts, to one account (NNTP feed) and back to several accounts.
Shouldn't we be hosting Windows on CentOS instead of the other way around? I mean, usually you go with Linux for robustness or price, and you host Windows because of a requirement (IIS, Exchange, politics) that can't easily be met natively on Linux. Hosting an operating system with uptimes measured in hundreds of days on an OS that has to be rebooted every 45 days doesn't seem wise to me.
I don't agree. I see tablets occupying a niche between smartphones and laptops. I can do a fair amount of work on my smartphone using logmein ignition. All I really need to make it truly effective is a slightly bigger screen. A small tablet means to me that I don't need to carry a laptop around to do remote administration. This is of considerable value to me, being essentially oncall 24/7.
My e-reader has been my smartphone for probably a decade. My e-reader in the previous decade was my PDA. I personally don't see the appeal in a single-purpose device.
But to be effective, (a) no Winders. I mean seriously, don't we know by now that Winders doesn't work in a touch-only environment? It's just not a market M$ is interested in pursuing. Oh, they'll put something out there just to have a presence, but we all know that "tablet edition" is just the Accessibility suite rebranded. (b) No elderly smartphone-editions of Android. There's a steep learning curve on any new OS, and Android's curve is just starting to level out. Go back a couple minor revisions, and the OS rapidly gets unusable. You really do need to use a recent version of Android for a good user experience.
So given this, the Viewsonic tablet was exactly the opposite of what you'd want to do for a product like this. I bet the design meetings were really interesting.
Moreover, I bet the iPad design team is laughing their heads off. Craptastic offerings like this only pollute the message. It's almost like Viewsonic did it on purpose.
....skiffy would cost to watch *and* the quality of most of their programming would remain shite. The best of both worlds....
I don't consider skiffy (I'll go back to pronouncing it "scifi" when they fix the spelling) a channel worth watching. Rather, I consider a couple programs worth watching, that happen to reside on skiffy. It's very liberating, and a lot less frustrating, to think in terms of content rather than content providers. I don't care that skiffy shows wrestling or ghost busting or horrible shite "original programming" because I don't watch same.
And... c'mon. Caprica was carp. Not on the scale of "megaoctopus vs giant razor clam" but nevertheless. Had it not a connection to BSG it would have sunk without a trace. It tried to appeal to the soap opera crowd by having too many characters and unnecessary plot lines, and was about as fun and satisfying to watch as laundry drying in the rain. SGU started out carp and finally got good in the last few episodes when the writers realized the clock was ticking and they needed to get off their collective butts and quit stalling the plot hoping to reach the magic 72 episode threshold. (I got out of breath just writing that.) I tell newcomers to watch episode 1-3 and then skip the rest of the first season.
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I think I agree. I mean, compare the plot and dialog of Batman: Sub Zero (1998) with Batman and Robin (1997). The former was an animated movie ostensibly intended for kids. The latter was... I dunno... At PG-13, I thought it might be intended for teens and young adults, but I think that's an insult to teens and young adults.
The budget on the latter was estimated at $125M. Budget on the former isn't even listed, was probably in single digit millions. (This isn't a fair comparison, but I had to bring it up. Think of all the starving children $125M could have fed...)
Yet, Sub Zero is by far the superior story. In fact, saying it was better than Batman and Robin is not saying enough. If you wanted to make a Mister Freeze live action film, and you just used the Sub Zero script as written, you'd still make a superior movie, even with the same lackluster cast.
To bring this discussion full circle, this is why advanced information about "blockbusters" is absolutely vital these days. Because "blockbusters" so often degenerate into "death by committee", and by the time they reach the screen, they're a noisy, frantic, busy, mighty sucking sound. My daughter (16 year old art student) is so fed up with fractional-gigabuck crapfests that her desire to see a film has become inversely proportional to its budget, and she heavily favors small independent studios that are still willing to take chances. I can't fault that. I still want to see Green Lantern, though. Even though it could be this year's transforrretch. I still can't say it.
> Is that related to "Baying it up?"
Oh, I love that! Can I use it? As in Transforrretchhh. Geeze (wipes eyes) I can't even say it.
> The system will also include an experiment that uses phones' microphones to sense when riders are on buses.
Yeah, that's what the experiment is for. To sense whether riders are on buses, to check mass transit ridership. Really.
> Actually, I always try to miss all the clips and previews for any movie I'm vaguely interested in watching. They're so much more enjoyable going in with minimal expectations.
Fair enough. I can appreciate that, and years ago I tried to do the same thing. The problem is, I got suckered into a big budget crapfest wayyyy too many times, and at today's prices, I just can't justify that anymore. A certain amount of Caveat Emptor is necessary these days in my opinion, which necessitates that surprises are fewer on opening days. Feel free to disagree.
For instance, I very nearly ended up paying money to see Sucker Punch...
As an X-men fan, as I assume you are, I can't believe you missed that in the plethora of advance materials on the film.
But to be utterly pedantic, I didn't see anything in the film that would forbid it from being a reboot. Personally, I'd like to pretend the other movies didn't happen. I suspect that won't be the case, but hope springs eternal.
The first X-men movie seemed to be stiff and self-conscious. This is often the case in the first film of a franchise. What was unusual was that the second and third films were *more* stiff and self-conscious. Although there were enjoyable bits, overall the first film sorta worked as a "first film", the second mostly didn't work, and the third didn't work at all. I personally think this was due to an inexcusable overuse of Wolverine in what was supposed to be an ensemble cast. Feel free to disagree.
Parenthetically, why do "blockbuster" movie scripts suck so often? If "the last stand" had a tenth of the creativity and pathos of "god loves man kills" it would have been worth watching. As it is we got a bunch of set-piece battles and some big digital effects, but the rest was cliche even for a comic book.
Anyway, First Class had its problems (excellent dialog over here, really laughably bad dialog over there, like the writers were bipolar) (the change of Raven's appearance from appliances and body makeup to some kind of zip-up wetsuit) (Charles' inexplicably inept handling of his relationship with his adopted sister) but in general the story worked. It's the first x-men movie I've wanted to see twice.
Yeah, Alex was really Scott's younger brother, Sean was a contemporary of Charles, yadda yadda. We've had so many different versions of the story in the comics (I prefer "Ultimate x-men") that I can't see how we could complain that the backstory has changed again. The movies really only need to be self-consistent. And worth watching. The last one wasn't. This one was.
> What I didn't realize is that this film was going to really be a Prequel.
C'mon, politics aside, does anyone really believe that?
Seems to me the solution would be to post "I wanted to use this [dentist,doctor,occultist] but they required that I sign the following agreement: [...]
I suspect you'll see backpedaling immediately.
Or, sign the agreement, then post anonymously.
Have you seen the trailer for DNF? One could argue it qualifies.
Amazon's not alone.
I can see it now... June 3 comes and goes... No word for three days, then on Monday Randy Pitchford of Gearbox makes a short public statement that they've had "a really bad weekend" and will have to regroup... By Wednesday they'll say they miscalculated the release date and it'll be sometime in November. Wired gets one last chance to vote DNF "vaporware of the year"...
Then it's all rendered moot on October 21 when the world ends. DNF fanatics on rooftops are still trying to torrent the leaked beta while the lava moves in.
I appreciate your position, but there is always late at night when the family is asleep. Don't forget the headphones.
I disagree. Example: I've been a geek since before AlGore invented the internet, but I have learned to defer to my daughter for obscure Android questions. Not because I'm afraid to push buttons -- quite the contrary -- but because I no longer have the patience to struggle with badly thought-out interfaces. She'll do a recursive journey down each menu path looking for obscure settings, usually while watching TV, where I'll either blow it off or look it up on Android Central, or ask her. This has absolutely nothing to do with being "scared" of the interface. It has to do with not wanting to invest in the time to figure out where the designer haphazardly pasted a feature, or (in this case) the function of various unmarked buttons.
Remember, correlation is not causation. That some people have anxiety about obscure interfaces, and that they tend to be "old" (whatever that means in this context), doesn't necessarily lead to the conclusion that a well-designed interface would incite fear in the elderly merely because they aren't familiar with it. The actual cause, in my opinion, is more likely to be that the examples -- cute trendy buttons that don't advertise their true purpose -- are indicative of bad design.
Hell, my mother -- in her seventies -- called me not long ago, said she had a computer problem she couldn't figure out. When the usual stuff didn't solve it, she booted from the cd and was rooting around in the recovery console. That takes more guts than possessed by most non-geeks of any age.
It's not an older/younger thing, it's entirely an "unnecessarily complicated or obscure" thing. Sure, younger people have more experience with enigmatic interfaces, and are more likely to keep trying without getting frustrated, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the interface in question appeals to young folk. For instance, a "set alarm" button would be more immediately understood regardless of age, or (and this point is completely missed) degree of geekiness.
> it may sound odd, but consider the lord of the rings,
The book or the movie?...
Yeah, I was being unfair. I used it for about 3 months when AOL was a new thing, but finally dropped it (which took an additional two months and required that I cancel the credit card they were charging -- but I digress) because the people using it weren't... my kind of people. The geeks were still using IRC and Usenet. Now the IRC users appear to be using Google Talk. And the Usenet users... who migrated there from discrete bulletin boards, migrated from Usenet to various internet forums, which in my opinion was a step backwards. I went from several accounts, to one account (NNTP feed) and back to several accounts.
Way before AIM, there was Usenet and IRC. AIM was for the technically unproficient.
And then, in phase two, Netflix could sell you a box that allows you to record a show to watch later!
Probably, in the environments jbplou is talking about, because it's not Windows.
Shouldn't we be hosting Windows on CentOS instead of the other way around? I mean, usually you go with Linux for robustness or price, and you host Windows because of a requirement (IIS, Exchange, politics) that can't easily be met natively on Linux. Hosting an operating system with uptimes measured in hundreds of days on an OS that has to be rebooted every 45 days doesn't seem wise to me.
Typically the base station supports bluetooth pairing with a cell phone. I don't see that feature in that item, though.
I don't agree. I see tablets occupying a niche between smartphones and laptops. I can do a fair amount of work on my smartphone using logmein ignition. All I really need to make it truly effective is a slightly bigger screen. A small tablet means to me that I don't need to carry a laptop around to do remote administration. This is of considerable value to me, being essentially oncall 24/7.
My e-reader has been my smartphone for probably a decade. My e-reader in the previous decade was my PDA. I personally don't see the appeal in a single-purpose device.
But to be effective, (a) no Winders. I mean seriously, don't we know by now that Winders doesn't work in a touch-only environment? It's just not a market M$ is interested in pursuing. Oh, they'll put something out there just to have a presence, but we all know that "tablet edition" is just the Accessibility suite rebranded. (b) No elderly smartphone-editions of Android. There's a steep learning curve on any new OS, and Android's curve is just starting to level out. Go back a couple minor revisions, and the OS rapidly gets unusable. You really do need to use a recent version of Android for a good user experience.
So given this, the Viewsonic tablet was exactly the opposite of what you'd want to do for a product like this. I bet the design meetings were really interesting.
Moreover, I bet the iPad design team is laughing their heads off. Craptastic offerings like this only pollute the message. It's almost like Viewsonic did it on purpose.
It's almost like Viewsonic set out to do a technological demonstration on why tablets don't work.
I don't consider skiffy (I'll go back to pronouncing it "scifi" when they fix the spelling) a channel worth watching. Rather, I consider a couple programs worth watching, that happen to reside on skiffy. It's very liberating, and a lot less frustrating, to think in terms of content rather than content providers. I don't care that skiffy shows wrestling or ghost busting or horrible shite "original programming" because I don't watch same.
And... c'mon. Caprica was carp. Not on the scale of "megaoctopus vs giant razor clam" but nevertheless. Had it not a connection to BSG it would have sunk without a trace. It tried to appeal to the soap opera crowd by having too many characters and unnecessary plot lines, and was about as fun and satisfying to watch as laundry drying in the rain. SGU started out carp and finally got good in the last few episodes when the writers realized the clock was ticking and they needed to get off their collective butts and quit stalling the plot hoping to reach the magic 72 episode threshold. (I got out of breath just writing that.) I tell newcomers to watch episode 1-3 and then skip the rest of the first season.